how can I ask you to be sorry when you didn't mean for it to happen? but you know the anger has to, has to, has to go somewhere, and there's no one to blame. I need someone to fault for this. tell me, Tracy, are you even out there? are you hurt? does this hurt you? this whole mess, what's happened to us, not getting to be with us, does it hurt at all? are YOU sad? are YOU angry? why the fuck did you do it, Trace? we were going to get better together; you promised. I promised. was I so awful, was I so far away, that it didn't matter anymore? I kept going no matter what, and what did you do? what were you thinking? why didn't you choose something else, anything else? you *had* people to call, you *had* help, you *had* people who could love you and recognize your need. you didn't have to take those fucking pills. what about Rogers, Tracy? what about Brittany coming back after her overdose, me yelling at her in group for not caring, not understanding what she'd almost done, what I'd gone through, finding her, having to go for help? what about the look on your face that day when you said you'd never seen in from that side, never thought about it that way before? it got through to you; I know it did. I know you understood that day that we'd felt those same awful feelings with you, when - what was it? less than a week after your admission? - you drank that fucking astringent and nearly died? you don't even remember that! you don't even know what went on. I remember. I remember coming out into the hallway, seeing you in the wheelchair, so completely out of it. I remember saying good morning, because I didn't know what else to say, and not knowing if you even heard me. and then the RCs and the nurses talking about how they tried to wake you up for vitals and you couldn't get out of bed. all that time you spent at the hospital, when they wouldn't tell us anything, and wouldn't let us call. and you came back, and you were so grateful, so grateful for everyone, so grateful for RED, so grateful to be in the same place you'd desperately wanted to get out of a week before... did you just forget all that? I know you don't decide to commit suicide in a rational, logical state of mind. I know you don't look over your vast experience of life for insight; I know it's just the fucking out of control depression making everything seem twisted and different than it is. I know that. but I've been there, too, damnit. I've been there, too. ready to take the pills. ready to make the cuts. ready to call it over, and *I didn't!* so why did you? WHY? I've defended you this whole time, Tracy; I've told everyone how it was not a suicide, you were killed by your disease... I've told everyone how it can't possibly make sense in any other filter because *you* were *so alive* - that's so much of who you were, that shy, bubbling cheerleader girl... so no, you can't have killed yourself. and yeah, you changed your mind. you tried to take it back, the way the other times were taken back. and they stabilized you. they stabilized you, and *then* you crashed, so obviously, *obviously* - it was the eating disorder - the damage from the eating disorder that left your body to weak to withstand that blow. but DAMNIT. my body could have been just as weak. my depression was just as strong. my fear and paralysis, my eating disorder, my... it was all as bad as yours. so, what? I wasn't as impulsive. my depression tended to paralyze me, so I didn't do anything - eventually - not even anything destructive? what's the fucking difference, Tracy? between us? blue hair and green eyes and animal crackers and teddy grahams... what's the difference? why the hell aren't you here?
are you anywhere? anywhere? are you somewhere good? did it work out, after all... suicide's just a shortcut to the miraculous afterlife, and you're living it up now, playing angel for all the girls who're still here? I don't want to yell at you, I don't want to blame you... I know you're just as much a victim as we are; I know that. I know you don't choose to be sick, and you don't choose to commit suicide; I know what it's really like, in the moment, I KNOW... but you said we'd do this together. and then you just slipped away. why didn't I see it coming, those last weeks, after the promise, when you started to struggle again, and I made a decision to keep moving forward - so when I left, you were just starting to make it back to a place you could work from? you left me here. to try and get better without you. every awful thing that happened... and you know, losing you... that was the first time in my life I ever felt like things couldn't be made right. that was the first time I ever felt like no matter what earthly miracles we managed, it couldn't be enough. you went too far. you went too far with this; there's no way to bring you back, and I'm so mad at you. I don't want to be mad at you! when was I ever mad at you? what about you *ever* rubbed me the wrong way, irritated me? why did you do it, Tracy? why did you die? I thought you wanted to be a senior, wanted to graduate, wanted to go back to school and have friends and... did you honestly have no say in this? ...how is it possible that you did everything you could and died, and I did everything I could and lived? how? because when I felt crazy, I made scratches and cuts on my skin, and you poured shit down your throat? is that why? is that really the best answer this fucking universe has for me? ...you know. I used to think... parts of who you were were so young and sweet. I couldn't imagine you growing up, really, even though it seemed so wrong that you wouldn't get to do so. now, I think, those parts of you were afraid. I think you were fucking scared to be an adult, just like I am. and I think it fucking sucks that you never will be. I want to know you in your twenties, damnit. I want to see you go to college, realize how smart you are, how capable... I want you to have been here to see my hair go blue, and my illness get beaten to a pulp... I want to see you with your friend again, those people who really did understand how valuable you were (what about them? how are they? what happened to them?) ...I want you to see me go on my first date and feel totally incompetant and scared; I want you to take me to a club. I want you to show me how to dance - friendly payback for whatever I showed you in algebra. I want you back. why can't that happen? are you too far away? are you nothing? is it just impossible to reverse? are you happier where you are? everyone is always saying how you weren't happy here. I think that's bullshit we use to comfort ourselves. plenty of us weren't happy. plenty of us were in hell. things changed here; we changed *here*... there were other options, you know. do you know that? are you sorry?
I don't really want to blame you; it just hurts so much... and I just wish I could know an answer. even one. like... was that you, in my room in D!@#$%^ a couple years ago? like, did you know what was happening, after they stabilized you, when you started to fall away? were you scared? were you relieved? do you wish you could come back? are you even out there, somewhere, able to wish and want and... be? Tracy, Rogers made the difference for me. it made such a huge, ginormous difference. nothing, not even the end of the world three years ago, seems like it can stop me. you all...loved me, and I understood that, and I changed, and it was enough. it was enough, for me. so? we didn't love you less. you didn't change less. you were just as strong, just as smart, just as passionate. what happend, Tracy? I loved you. why wasn't that enough? why didn't it make any difference? why didn't you fucking call me? cry yourself to sleep that night and realize that, by default and if only temporarily, things look better in the morning? what hurt so badly? was it the same old stuff? was it losing Rogers? (if only you could have known, if I could have known, if we could have gone through it together...) I don't think I'm a superhero in your story. I don't think I could have made any more difference being in your life that ... month and eleven days after I discharged than I did while we were there. but what the fuck? why you? why anyone, but why you? you were like me; you were only hospitalized *one time*... you had *just* gotten sick... hope was high. people go back into residential three, six, ten times. people get second chances. girls are statistically more likely to attempt suicide but less likely to "succeed" in that attempt - so WHY? you had everything in your corner that I did. why did you lose out? why did you give up? why did you leave us, leave me? recovering was just the beginning; we were supposed to have *lives* together.
...and I don't know. it came so suddenly afterward. bam! out of Rogers, bam! into New York, bam! the phone call telling me... maybe your death made a difference. maybe that's what you didn't have. maybe I succeeded partly because I lost you and partly in spite of it.
I don't know your birthday. I don't know what kind of flowers you like. I didn't go to your wake, I didn't see your gravestone... I don't have anything to offer you. I don't know anything about where you are now. all my insight into the struggle that we shared; the ground you're on now (if it even is ground, if you're even *on* it) is totally foreign to me. the only thing I still know is that I love you. past present future tense: I love you. and I'm going to get better, Trace. for my own reasons. I'm going to live, as well as I can, for as long as I can, and I'm going to miss you the whole godddamn time. and think of you. and love you. and...
you know that compilation cd you had, all the hits of the year? they've released like six of them since we were at Rogers. I always think of you. I always hate at least 1/2 of the songs that are on them. Five for Fighting has had like four or five singles since Superman. there are so many things now that didn't exist then. you're missing them. they're missing you. I'm missing you.
I wonder if this annoys you. if it's possible for it to even reach you... are you sick of watching people weep? is it like having been sick, there's nothing you can say, you're sorry, too; it hurt you, too; but how many times can you apologize for something you didn't even control...? or do you remember, when I start to cry, the first day after I heard about your death that I started eating again... what I said then... about how the world wasn't stopping to take note of this, and it was making me crazy because people needed to know, needed to notice, needed to understand what a loss this was...? and how I decided that, if no one else was going to stop and grieve... I was. I decided that you were too wonderful, too incredible, too deserving of life and love to disappear without any apparent effect on anyone. I decided I'd feel it, even if the rest of the world was just going to move along. and I knew that in order to feel, I had to eat.
thinking of that... maybe even I can understand what the doctor says. I'm not angry with you to be mean, to be unfair, to be judgmental. I'm not trying to hurt you with how much this hurts me. I'm still just refusing to be numb, refusing to not feel it, refusing to pretend you weren't YOU, that this was a loss anyone could take in stride. I'm yelling because I love you; isn't that a silly thought. I'm mad because I love you. I'm crying because I miss you, I want you, I need you, I love you, so much. Girl. I want you to turn on the radio and pump up the volume for your favorite song... all those 2004 countdowns; which one would you have loved? what were you going to do, when you were grown-up, still sweet, still innocent, still kind... but no longer afraid?
I miss you.
and I was just thinking... I never got to call you, not one time. but - little gifts - I did, didn't I? I did call that one time from my pass, and you came to the phone, and you were so upbeat and supportive of me, so happy to talk to me, and I was amazed. you gave me your dog to help me get through, and I did get through, didn't I? all the way here.
I hope it is peaceful, it is somewhere, you are still around. I just hope that...even still...sometimes you miss us. I don't want you to be in pain; I don't want you to have to feel all the hurtful things... it's just... I hurt because I love you. I don't want you to be so at rest you aren't alive, so at rest that you can't love me, too. you know?
thank you... I know this is part of the pain that made me say what I did yesterday. having lost you is one of the things I don't always think I can take, one of the things I wish I could just erase from my life. that's true, but there's another side to it. you only lived to be seventeen. very few people got to know you... far, far fewer than would have. practically the whole world missed out on this one. but I didn't. I got to know you. I got to love you. I get to know you loved me.
~me